


Silver Tarnishes

by adumbledore



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Jealousy, Pottermore Compliant, Sisters, jily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-18 01:18:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16107767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adumbledore/pseuds/adumbledore
Summary: Lily was enchanting and beautiful and brilliant and irresistible. Petunia was charming and pretty and smart and tempting. Lily was golden. Petunia was silver. Lily had James. Petunia, well, she had Vernon.Series of chapters starring Petunia's view of James/Lily's relationship





	1. Chapter 1

Petunia Evans was in her middle age was plain-faced and uptight. She hadn’t always been; once upon a time she had been carefree and happy, a little girl with a smattering of freckles and smiling eyes. In her teens and twenties… well, she certainly wasn’t ugly, and she wasn’t unpleasant to be around, but she wasn’t her sister. Boys liked Petunia. She had lots of friends, was smart, got good grades. She wasn’t disliked. She was the silver sister. She was wonderful, but she wasn’t quite Lily Evans. Petunia was charming. Lily was enchanting. Petunia was pretty. Lily was beautiful. Petunia was smart. Lily was brilliant. And every time that the golden sister came around, she was overlooked and forgotten.  
  
This left her very, very bitter. She didn’t hate her little sister. She resented her, avoided her, layers of malice covering up for the unhealed wounds of her lack of magical ability. But she and Lily had a wildly changing relationship, ranging from the best friends they had been as little children to pure, unadulterated hatred. Most of the time it was cordial, like the friend you’ll talk to if you see them around, but would never go out of your way to find.  
  
That winter, she returned home from her little apartment for Christmas, and Lily came from her awful school.  
She went to answer the door, and was struck with a brilliant sight. It was a boy, taller than she was in heels, wearing wiry glasses and with a small smirk playing on his lips. She didn’t know where this boy came from, or how he had ended up on her front steps, but she was sure glad he had. Her boyfriend, Vernon, was lovely. Plain, vanilla, boring, but lovely, and normal. Sure, he was a bit large and he had this godawful moustache, but she liked him, liked his company. He loved her, he had told her so, and she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her. She told him just the same, but it wasn’t quite love. She loved the time that they spent together, but she wouldn’t die for this man like she pretended that she would.  
  
Upon locking eyes with this messy-haired boy, she was prepared to call up Vernon and tell him that it just wasn’t working out.  
  
“Hi…” She found herself saying.  
  
“Hi” He responded. “Is this the Evans’?”  
  
“Ya. I’m Petunia.”  
  
“Petunia” He said, and her name had never sounded so good. Was it just her, or did she detect a bit of recognition in his voice, like she was someone he knew? Excited, she stepped a bit closer to him. He smelled very good. His eyes widened in excitement. Or was it alarm? She couldn’t quite tell. Suddenly, Lily appeared from down the hallway. Damnit! Perfect, beautiful, irresistible Lily Evans coming to snatch the boy away. It wasn’t fair! She had seen him first!  
  
“Lily” the boy said, and he sounded relieved. She gave him a small smile. Wait a second! How did he know her name? Lily hugged the boy, and she was full of a surge of anger. What right did she have? Lily and the mysterious stranger piped up in animated conversation heading further into the house, and she found herself cutting in.  
  
“I-who are you? How do you know each other?”  
  
“What?-oh” Lily said, turning around. “He goes to the madhouse too” she waggled her fingers and gave a tinkling laugh. The way she laughed, Petunia noticed was very pretty, and she couldn’t help but focus on his hand, resting on her lower back. She saw something she hadn’t noticed before, what she knew to be a wand stuffed into his back pocket. James Potter, he later said his name was. It was a lovely name.  
  
Her parents absolutely fell in love with Potter, and insisted he stay for dinner. He had them charmed within a few sentences. Lily was enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible, and so was this boy,this awful, awful boy who came into her house seemingly only to remind her that she was the silver sister. That she was charming and smart and pretty and tempting, and so was her boyfriend, but they would never, ever be on the same level as the enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible. It hurt. Vernon had met Petunia’s parents four times, and he still called them Mr. and Mrs. Evans. Within minutes, they were just Sarah and Lawrence, and it made Petunia fuming  
  
Why did Lily get this perfect, perfect boy, who wanted to catch the bad guys when he graduated, was the captain of his wizard football team, was tall, and handsome and charming and loved by their parents! Why did he get special treatment, acting all chummy with their dad, when Vernon, perfectly respectable, hardworking Vernon got no such treatment? They sat down to dinner, and she felt bile rising in her mouth as he looked at her. Like she was the centre of his whole world, like she had hung all the stars in the sky. Vernon never looked at her like that. He was in love with her, but his world wouldn’t stop turning if she wasn’t in it. He would be sad, but it wouldn’t destroy him to have her taken from him. She wondered what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of such a love, or to give it yourself. She didn’t know what it felt like to be in love at all.  
Well, that was lying. There was Alex Nosktrole, the summer when she was eighteen. She had really loved him. Maybe not quite in the way that James and Lily did each other, but it had been love all the same, and that December, when he had… when he had…, well she didn’t like to think of it any more. For one, simple moment, she let herself wish. She wished, for the seventeen thousandth time, that she was Lily. But when Lily had come back from her first summer at… that school, she had suppressed her emotions. She almost convinced herself that she wanted nothing to with Lily’s amazing, spectacular, magical world. Lily was a mutant and if science fiction had taught her anything, it was that nobody like mutants. But she stopped, for just one second, and imagined herself as Lily.  
  
She was on a train, and then she was in this huge castle. She knew next to nothing about...alright, she’d say it, just for now, about...Hogwarts. Lily had tried to tell her, but she hadn’t listened. She was holding a magic wand, performing all these crazy types of magic. She wasn’t quite sure what her spells were doing, but they were very colourful, making a spectacle.She grew up, and she was the witch prefect, she was Head Girl at a school for magic. And then there was James… Head Boy, sports star, wanted by all but solely hers. She saw his arms around her waist, her hands in his hair. She saw his playful smile and him playing pranks on her and teasing her, but also holding doors open and telling her that she was more beautiful than all of the stars in the sky. She saw them in a dark corridor, wrapped around each other. He was in love with her, so, so in love with her, and he would never hurt her. She was the witch, she was the golden sister, and James Potter was in love with her. She looked over to where James and Lily sat, laughing with each other, leaning into each other, and was angry. How could Lily do this to her? And the boy destined to love her? What of him?  
  
“Could you not?” She asked, slamming her hand down violently. “It’s disrespectful, for one, and it’s been going on all night!” She screamed.  
  
“Petunia, get a hold of yourself!” Her mother reprimanded. “There’s nothing wrong going on here!” She sat back in shock. This was why she didn’t allow herself to dream. Lily just rolled her eyes and continued eating, but James was watching Petunia carefully. Oh God, he knew! She got the feeling he always knew. He would have to be used to it. They both would. After all, they were enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible and of course, wherever they went, people would be falling at their feet.

  


The next time James Potter came around for dinner was next summer, right after he and Lily graduated. She had the misfortune of being there, instead of where she lived with her best friend in Little Whinging. This time, he brought gifts, and if they hadn’t already been completely taken with him they would’ve been then. The earrings he’d bought for her mother were expensive, Petunia noted. The boy must be rich. As if he’d needed something to add to the list. She’d later asked Lily about it. Lily, who had no idea of her sister’s infatuation with her boyfriend, who, for his part, took it gracefully. Pureblood. She’d said, as if that would make things any clearer, how this seventeen year old had a spare thousand pounds to spend on his girlfriend’s parents.  
  
“He’s a pureblood. An ancient wizarding family. Not a drop of Muggle blood in him.”  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
“Well, Muggles are non-magical people. I’m Muggleborn, you see, because Mom and Dad aren’t magical. Witches and wizards almost always have magical kids, even if they have kids with muggles-those people are called halfbloods, if you have a mix of wizarding and muggle heritage. Almost everyone in the wizarding world is a halfblo-”  
  
“I asked why the guy is so bloody rich, not for wizarding 101”  
  
“I’m getting there! So then there’s the people who only have witches and wizards in their ancestry. Not a single non-magical person or muggleborn anywhere in their family tree. They’re pureblood. That’s what James is. Obviously, there’s very few purebloods left in the world. Because if just one person had a kid with a muggleborn or a halfblood at some point down the line, the entire bloodline is ruined. And they’re all very, very rich. James is an only child, so the entire Potter family fortune will one day be his”  
  
Damnnit! Vernon was a successful businessman, but not that successful. He was well-off, but that didn’t exactly compare to being the sole heir to an ancient family fortune. She had been hoping that he was really, really irresponsible with money. That at least would be a fault in perfect James Potter.


	2. Chapter 2

She had convinced Vernon to meet James and Lily at a restaurant. 

“She is my sister” she had insisted. “She’s abnormal, but she’s still my sister. There has to be something good about her. Maybe we’re missing something. Just try.” When Lily had reached out to her and said she wanted to fix the relationship between them, Petunia had been overjoyed. She loved her fiance-she could say it now, she loved him. It wasn’t as fiery or as passionate as the way she had loved Alex Nokstrole. It was calm, steady, and certainly not as overwhelming. It wasn’t really that important, but it was there. She was in love with Vernon Dursley. He had his faults, but she loved him through it. When Lily had suggested they have a double date with James and Vernon, though, her heart had plummeted. Because having to witness that love in action yet again would only devastate her when she compared it to the way she loved Vernon, the way he loved her. It would maybe, just maybe make her wish she was the golden sister again. But-no. She had long pushed those thoughts out of her mind. Lily was not the golden sister. James was not someone to be jealous of. They were just a couple of freaks.

She had told Vernon that she was just trying to see if there was something in there that was good in Lily and her boyfriend. In truth she was starved-starved for the company of her fiery, vivacious sister. Whether this went downhill or not, it would be entertainment, something she hadn’t had in weeks, between wedding planning and keeping her fiance happy, which required an embarrassingly large amount of cooking and listening to him drone on about drills. Lily, she thought longingly, probably didn’t have to cook for James to keep him happy. Of course she didn’t! If James were, like Vernon, the kind of man who judged a woman on her ability to be a productive housewife, he would have left Lily long ago. She couldn’t cook to save her life, and her room was constantly a mess. That, Petunia thought smugly, was the one thing at which she was better than Lily. Then again, Lily probably didn’t want to spend her days cooped up inside, cleaning and waiting on her husband. Neither did Petunia, if she really admitted it. It sounded an awful life. But that was what normal families did, and so that was what she would do. 

She and Lily embraced each other, a little white lie they were both telling each other that there was nothing wrong between them,nothing unhealthy about their relationship. James shook her hand and then Vernon’s. She watched her fiance adoringly as he told them about his drill business-he was bragging a bit, not that she minded. Lily needed to know that Vernon was good and important and better than James. She looked up, expecting to see intimidation, or at least respect in Lily and James’ eyes. Lily looked slightly irked, whereas her boyfriend just looked amused.

“Yes, well I’m sure these drills are very important” James said. Lily elbowed him. He leaned over and said something in her ear, and she snickered under her breath. 

“Is something funny?” Vernon asked sharply.

“No, of course not” Lily said, still fighting the urge to smile. It made Petunia angry to see Vernon made a fool of without even really realizing it. Who did they think they were? Who do you think you are? An old voice asked, resurfacing, bringing her back to her childhood. They’re enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible. They’re golden! And what are you? She’d known this was a bad idea. She just had to focus in on Vernon, on their wonderful, normal life together. That was how she’d get through this.

“So what d’you do for a living?” Vernon asked James pompously. 

“Well, nothing yet, as we’ve only just graduated. I hope to someday become an Auror. It’s a dark wizard catcher, like a national security force”

“But you’re not yet?”

“No”

“Hm” There was an awkward silence, for a bit. “What car do you drive?” He asked. It was obviously meant to intimidate him. She wondered if it was working. 

“Well-ah-wizards don’t have cars”

“So you don’t drive one, then?” Vernon looked smug.

“I-well, I do have a racing broom”

“I’m sorry did you just say broom? As in, a broomstick?”

“Yes. It’s the Nimbus 1500. Fastest broom on the market, cost me a small fortune, it did, though”

“Well, I hate to break it to you Potter, my mum’s got about four of those” He said, eyes gleeful. 

“No, well, we have brooms for cleaning too, and they’re nowhere near the same thing.”

“Alright then” but there was tension between the two of them, in the air like electricity for several minutes until Vernon made the decision to restart the conversation.

“So if you’re unemployed, I suppose you’re on benefit. All of your lot must be, no one’s exactly going to pay you if you go around telling them that you catch dark wizards” He said with a laugh. 

“Well, actually, my family has plenty of money in the bank”

“The bank? You keep money in the bank?”

“Well, Gringotts. The wizard bank. It’s run by goblins, and some of the bigger vaults have a dragon guarding them” Vernon went a shade of red.

“Are you toying with me?” Goblins? Dragons? Did they take her fiance for a fool? Vernon scoffed. “And how much money do you have in this-Grintotts?”

“I’ve no idea” James said, looking a bit puzzled. “It’s very hard to count, you see, as it’s all in coins” Vernon turned magenta.

“Do you think I’m stupid? Coins! And I suppose it’s all in solid gold, too”

“Well, actually, it is. Most of it, at least. There’s some silver and bronze, too”

“James” Lily said quietly, and Petunia was pleased to know that she looked a bit ashamed. “Don’t” Was that all that awful boy got? After making fun of Vernon, just a don’t?

“Why?” He asked, looking perplexed. So he was a simpleton. Enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible? Ha. This one’d have trouble pouring water out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. Lily made imploring eyes at him. And then a little smirk played across his face, and he turned back to Vernon. 

“Just stacks of gold. And you give the goblin your key, and you go in a mine cart on pretty much one of those-what do Muggles call ‘em-rollercoasters and then you get into your vault. It can be a bit irritating though, as it’s very heavy to carry around.” She couldn’t believe that she had ever thought that this smirking Potter boy was perfect! He who thought he was so much better than Vernon, so incredible, so enchanting, so beautiful, so brilliant, so irresistible, so-golden. She took a sharp breath, tuning out the conversation and noticing vaguely, out of the corner of her eye, Lily putting her head in her hands. She turned things over in her mind. She thought she was past this! She thought she was in love with the idea of living a normal life, of spending her days in a perfect suburban neighbourhood with a perfect suburban family. She had been curious to see how she and Lily’s relationship could work as adults, free of childhood grudges and silly schoolgirl rivalries. But apparently it wasn’t just a sisterly bitterness towards the other’s strengths. Apparently Lily really was just better than her. Apparently she really was the silver sister. And she would never be satisfied with a life of normalities if she kept having to interact with the extraordinary. Vernon stood up abruptly, alerting her. He grabbed his coat.

“Come on, Petunia. We’re leaving. I refuse to entertain some crackpot egomaniac of a man who insists on insulting me when I am the one who has so generously agreed to tolerate him!” She stood, her chair screeching back, and Vernon threw some money on the table. He was not a man without honor. She left on his arm, angry as he was, but not angry at James Potter. Instead she was angry with the universe, angry with God, if he existed, angry with her parents, angry with anyone and everyone that got into this situation. Angry with her sister, for being born blessed, and with herself for being born ordinary. 

Lily, she decided, would not be a bridesmaid. She was done with being the silver sister. She would not be overshadowed by Lily ever again, especially on her own wedding day. Lily would not even be in attendance. Petunia would be iridescent and...enchanting and beautiful and brilliant and irresistible, for just one day. Lily lived it every day of her life, and Petunia was determined to taste just one day in the life of a golden person. Which meant no Lily. She would not be eclipsed on her wedding day.

She told Vernon that she was angry for the way he had been treated, and she was, partially. She shuddered to think what he would do if he knew about all the hours she had spent in the past seven years dreaming of attending Hogwarts. Her parents begged her to reconsider, begged her to invite Lily (‘she’s your sister, Petunia! She’s your only sister!’), but she was steadfast in her decision, and she would not be swayed. Until, a month after her meeting with Lily and her boyfriend, she stormed out of their house in a rage. They called out after her to rethink it, that she needed Lily at her wedding. She slammed the door behind her.

A week later, they died in a freak accident, their last request to her having been that she invite Lily to her wedding. So she did, and Vernon understood, because normal people cared about their parents. She sent out the invitation to Lily, nearly scratching off the plus one and then thinking the better of it. If she didn’t have James with her, she would need to talk to Petunia, because she knew nearly no one else. They had no cousins. 

So Lily and James showed up to what Petunia had planned to be her perfect day. A large diamond glittered on Lily’s finger. It was beautiful, and it almost had Petunia looking mournfully down at hers and picturing it on her finger, Lily wearing the mediocre one. Almost. She shook the thoughts from her head. As she walked down the aisle, she passed the two of them, and did not glance towards them. She walked past them and she pictured herself walking far away from the freakishness of the past and towards a new, brighter future. One where she would be safe from words she didn’t understand like ‘quidditch’ and ‘transfiguration’, and exploding teapots and pincushions that were really hedgehogs.

They didn’t speak at the reception, nor did she and Vernon acknowledge their existence. Her new husband, though, whenever he was in earshot of the soon-to-be-Potters would loudly insult James to whoever he was speaking to, sure that his future brother-in-law would hear it. To his credit, if he heard Vernon describing him as ‘some kind of amature magician’ or a ‘brainless bimbo’ or anything else, he did not cause a scene.


	3. Chapter 3

She and Vernon had not RSVPed to the Potters’ wedding. The week of it, as she pictured, Lily would be full of her pre-marriage nerves, final preparations on her mind, and the tiny, irrational fear in the back of her mind that her fiance would not show up. But that week, Vernon left on a business trip, and she was left merely standing there, wondering, wondering why she should not go. What would really be all too wrong with it? She could just leave whenever. And so, she called up her younger sister and asked her if she would mind if she came to the wedding. She expected harsh words. Rudeness. Anger. But Lily sounded delighted. 

So she stood off to the side as James and Lily Potter twirled around on the dance floor, sharing their first dance. He still looked at her the same way he had a year and a half ago at her parent’s house, when the Evans sisters were the Evans sisters, not the Dursley/Potter sisters, when their parents were around, when the Evans family existed at all. She was the centre of his entire universe. A glittering white cake sparkled in the light and levitated slightly, twirling around. Originally, she thought the reception had been lit by fairy lights and she was, at least partially right. Instead of her normal, Muggle fairy lights that wrapped around Christmas trees, she was standing beneath actual strings of real fairies. The whole place was magical, it shuddered with it. Sparkling fireworks occasionally went off, which nobody paid any attention to, and the flowers weren’t in vases, but rather just floating, held together by some sparkly silver ribbon that she had the feeling wasn’t real, something she couldn’t reach out and touch. It was everything she envied, everything she hated, and it enchanted her, no pun intended, drawing her in. 

Hours passed, the Potter’s guests getting livelier and livelier, especially one, the best man standing on a table half undressed screaming along to the words of some song she didn’t know, undoubtedly from the wizarding world, as a small crowd attempted to get him down. She pursed her lips a bit. There had been no drunken revelries at her wedding, that was one thing. They would’ve been out the door in a second. She did not participate, as she disapproved of alcohol as a principle, save for a single glass of wine after dinner. It could lead to poor decision making. She didn’t want to cause a spectacle, now did she? Think of what the neighbours would say!

Speaking of the neighbours, what would they say if they saw her here, surrounded by loud, intoxicated witches and wizards? She shuddered to even think of it. What was she doing here? She didn’t belong here! What had ever made her believe she could belong here? She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t have anything to do with Lily or her kind. She was done with them, forever. She moved out to the door, throwing one last longing look at a wand, before stepping out into the normal world. She never told Vernon that she attended.

If one could pinpoint an exact moment in which Petunia Dursley switched from charming and pretty and smart and tempting, to foul and plain and dulled and avoidable, it was then. Her intelligence had not been diminished, merely suppressed. She never used it, merely allowing her husband to think for her.

Two years later, she had the perfect life. She never spoke with Lily again, and Vernon never acknowledged her existence. There would be no odd clothes or frogspawn in her house ever again! It was as if Lily had simply been wiped from existence. It was what she had always dreamed of! She had a perfectly normal suburban husband and a perfectly normal suburban son and they all lived together in a perfectly normal suburban house. They hadn’t gone out for Halloween that year. One was much too young for trick-or-treating! They had had a perfectly wonderful, normal suburban night. Just like if Lily had never existed. Vernon hadn’t left for work yet, and she was making breakfast. Petunia headed through Privet Drive to the door to collect the milk, and swung it open. She screamed, and Vernon came running. There was a baby on their doorstep!

October 31, 1981  
Dear Petunia,  
Years ago you wrote to me about Hogwarts, and I was delighted to reply. I was terribly sorry that I could not fulfill your request. Today, I am afraid, we converse on much less happy terms than the education of a young mind. It is my sorrowful duty to inform you of the death of your sister Lily Potter, and her husband James. As you may or may not be aware, the wizarding world is currently at war against forces of evil, and your sister fought valiantly against them. Her and her husband were attacked, and though both perished, their son Harry survived. With their deaths the war is now at an end. As his only living relatives, I must entrust the care of Harry Potter to you and your husband, under the good faith that you will care for him as your own. His mother sacrificed herself for him, a form of magic older than time itself. He will be safest here, with her blood running through your veins. At the age of eleven, he will begin attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Until that time, I am sure you will take very good care of him.  
Regretfully,  
Albus W. P. B. Dumbledore

Her hands were shaking. Lily was dead? All the times that Petunia had wished Lily didn’t exist, she never wished that it would happen like this! ‘Gold is more likely stolen’ she heard her father’s voice. Him and Mom were arguing over which metal to get some kind of jewelry in. Her mom was for gold. ‘I like gold’ ‘Gold is more likely to be stolen’ ‘Yes, but silver tarnishes’. Suddenly, it had a whole new meaning layered onto it.

Vernon was adamant that they drop the boy of at an orphanage nearby, and she almost agreed with him. But when he opened her eyes, she saw herself gazing into the eyes of her younger sister, and it stirred something within her, something from long before all the bitterness and jealousy. The girl that she had played with, been raised with. They had braided each other’s hair and learned to ride bicycles. When an older boy in the park had pulled six year old Lily’s braid, well Petunia wished she could say she had stuck up for her. But then again, Lily was always very capable of defending herself. She had turned right around and punched the boy, and it had been Petunia who had dragged her off, kicking and screaming.

“No.” She said finally. She hadn’t contradicted Vernon in ages, who, already holding his keys and Dudley’s car seat, ready to drive off, looked shocked. “He is my sister’s son. He stays.”

A month later, she held Harry in her arms, enchanted with him. Her own son was screaming and kicking and causing a fuss, but this serene, adorable little boy just stared at her with his big green eyes and chubby cheeks. She was… enchanted. Her eyes widened. Of course. This boy would grow up to be enchanting and beautiful and brilliant and irresistible, just like his parents. She looked over at Dudley. He...well, he would be charming and pretty and smart and tempting, but only if he was very lucky. She remembered the bitterness and anger she had held towards Lily. She could not put her son through the same thing! No… this boy would not go to Hogwarts. He would have his extraordinariness snuffed out through sheer malice. She had to make sure he wouldn’t outshine Dudley!

History would not repeat itself.

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted and wrote this on ff.net like two years ago but I figured I wanted to post a story I had already written as my first one on ao3 so...


End file.
